The American Farm School of Thessaloniki was founded in 1904 and has a library since 1924. In 2000, after a generous donation, it underwent a complete renovation and was named Dimitris and Aliki Perrotis Library. Leaving behind the card catalog, the Library decided to also update its old Integrated Library System and proceeded with the purchase of the Horizon ILS in 2001. According to the needs at the time, Cataloging, Circulation, Administration and OPAC modules were used. Throughout the 15 years of the system’s operation more than 44.177 bibliographic records and 103.777 authority records were created. Extensive weeding of records in order to keep our collections current and up to date resulted in a more compact collection of 10566 records and 21237 authorities. At the same time the enrollment and thus the number of patrons were increased five times higher due to the expansion of current academic programs and the provision of new ones.

As expected, the new information technology reality and in light of the need to provide new, embedded and interactive services to Library patrons, a migration to a more user-friendly, Internet-based ILS, the open-source ILS Koha was decided.

In this direction, the Dimitris and Aliki Perrotis Library started, in September 2015, an in-house project (which is the topic of the presentation for kohacon2016) that would implement the migration to the Koha ILS, which was completed in February 2016. The work plan was organized into 5 phases as described below.

Phase 1. Bibliographic records and other data extraction from the HORIZON ILS.

At the end of the project, all data from the old ILS were migrated to Koha, while both staff and the end-users of Dimitris and Aliki Perrotis Library enjoy the new ILS and its advanced services (http://librarycatalog.afs.edu.gr)

Future enhancements wishlist

We are about to start!

Just a couple of days to Monday, May 30! Kohacon16 starts at 9:30 am, local time.
Presentations are going to be streamed live, all those not attending can watch from the conference homepage. on 26 May 2016